Linear tactics with crossbowmen

Sometimes, yes, that's why they used them.

Read up on the tactics of Spanish tercios and German Landsknecht. They existed in the period when guns slowly started dominating the battlefield. Both of them relied on pikemen and muskets, supported by artillery, cavalry and specialized close combat infantry. As time went on they relied more-and-more on muskets and so the number of pikemen started dropping. Then with the invention of the bayonet and better guns they could do away with the pikemen and other mêlée-oriented infantry. They had the sheet firepower required to break enemy formations with musket fire, and a bayonet charge was enough to scatter the survivors. This tactic could also work against cavalry if they did everything correctly. Mind you, most of the time the bayonet was more of a psychological weapon that was used to hold their ground, because an average person doesn't want to charge a wall of men holding pointy sticks.

Vid related is a good depiction of what happens if the line infantry fails to stop a cavalry charge. Their main mistake was that they started firing too early, so they panicked when the horsemen didn't start dropping like flies. Therefore they were unable to hold their formation, and got scattered and slaughtered. You can imagine how worse would it be if said line infantry has weapons with less firepower that are slower to reload and also don't function as pointy sticks.

Late crossbows could penetrate armour, but they were heavy and required a special reloading tool. they were as much of a pain in the ass to load as the arquebus if not more since they required a larger mechanical component than even a matchlock.

It's important to note however that heavy crossbows are harder to use from an entrenched position, even with the tool requires more energy to load and operate which tires the troops more, has much less psychological impact and lower penetration relative to physical energy input, muskets also provide a sometimes useful sometimes hindering smokescreen. Of all of those features the main one is the energy, with crossbows you still have to use your own human energy to launch your projectile, limiting the amount the commanders can force march you and limiting the amount of useful melee you can contribute to.
It's also important to not get confused with early modern/late medieval gun terminology, musket was originally used to refer to larger (commonly armour piercing) rifles with the arquebus and handgun having insufficient power for higher gauge plate.

That reminds me of this nice video that at first seems to be unrelated. Indeed, the sounds and light of musket fire has a lot greater psychological impact, and the bayonet charge is just as scary as a charge with better close combat weapons. Not to mention that they had pretty good musicians to back them up. In other words, I'd like to stress again that they not only had more firepower, but also a lot more shock power than before.

The Persians did something similar having a very thin front line of men with wicker shields and spears….but backed by an enormous amount of archers.

Things fell apart for them when armor was good enough to stop most arrows, so in Marathon the Greeks just ran at them in a long thin line, then smashed through their lines and destroyed them.

It'd work with crossbows no doubt, but they'd have the same weaknesses (frontal charge by heavy infantry or flanking by horses).

One issue with any large formation infantry is that by virtue of being massed units they often had a lower standard of armour. so while a foot-knight may be vulnerable to a crossbowman but not an archer, a crossbowman will often be placed at undue risk of archer fire at the front of a formation. it should aslo be said that an archer can use a small shield or buckler with his bow, whereas a heavy crossbowman would need a pavise he can place into the ground while he loads which widens still the vulnerability gap between possible forces. i suppose the counter would be to focus all of your funding onto helmet and back armour like some sort of strange turtle soldier, but then they would be yet more vulnerable to lance and pike.

So if crossbows were useless against armor and shields like suggests, and infantry or cavalry can steamroll them as described by , and archers can fire faster and can use better shields as stated by , then why did this piece of shit even come into use on the battlefield? From what I've seen in this thread the crossbow is apparently a clumsy, weak, overcomplicated weapon, so what made it justifiable for military use in medieval times? Is it just that they were stupider back then?

Think of them as bolt-action rifles chambered of Lapua Magnum. They aren't bad weapons at all, but you shouldn't equip a whole squad only with those rifles and then expect it to win a firefight.

But according to common soldier armor and shields can effectively stop crossbow bolts, so it'd be more like an entire squad armed with Ruger 10/22s.

All three of them have no idea how the crossbow was used on the battlefield. All of continental Europe used the Crossbow, which should tell you how useful it was.
Crossbows were successfully used by Europeans to fight Oriental mounted Archers, their bows couldn't overcome the Pavise shields, they lacked the armor to stop crossbow bolts and they usually didn't attack with with Infantry to be faster.
Should they try to directly attack die Crossbowmen, that meant they were close enough so that the European Heavy Cavalry(Knights) could catch up and destroy them.
Later their were accompanied by formations of Pikemen, which made the European infantry pretty nasty to deal with. If you want to get the Crossbowmen there are Pikemen in the way and if you wanted to get the Pikemen you get shot at by the Crossbowmen.
Unlike the Longbow, the crossbow allows being operated at a relative small space(like in the formation of a pike square) and the person operating it can actually aim without having the strain of drawing the bow.

Modern body armor can stop bullets and SWAT shields can stop them to, so should the police and soldiers stop using them?

Can be used by malnourished peasants with little to no training (much like firearms), quality archery requires years to perfect and normally a culture has to be created around it.

Crossbows and bows have about 5 times less effective range comparing to muskets so they can't provide decisive firepower of gunpowder and turn shooting infantry into main power of the battlefield like musket did.

Nigger this is a gookposter thread about a hypothetical scenario where you put a line of crossbowmen on an open field like in OP's pic. Your entire post had nothing to do with any of that. Crossbows lacked the power to penetrate plate. His men would get slaughtered without inflicting a single casualty to the enemy. This is the entire point of this thread. Telling gookposter that his idea is retarded.

Crossbows and bows have about 5 times less effective range comparing to muskets so they can't provide decisive firepower of gunpowder and turn shooting infantry into main power of the battlefield like musket did.

It's more a question of if the Brits talk about how bows can pierce armor and shields, while the Greek is talking about how bolts can't do that, why wouldn't they use bows instead?

I actually know all of this already, but I'm purposely asking all of these stupid questions in order to force people to realize that many of the posters in this thread are exaggerating the weaknesses of crossbows and inflating the abilities of other medieval weapons, either out of ignorance or from a genuine, but misplaced sense of superiority. The Genoese and Swiss would have been nowhere near as popular and widespread mercenaries during the medieval period if crossbows were really as pointless as many people in this thread seem to think.

Late crossbows were slightly more powerful and a lot easier to train with.
And no, neither arrow or bolts can penetrate plate armor.

Medieval crossbow loses to bow especially against composite bow. Crossbow shines as siege weapons and can be utilized by low trained personnel. During siege shooting can be done by several sharpshooters and reloading done by all manservants of the castle. Another interesting thing about crossbows is that bolts with wooden fletching have infinite shelf life, again very useful quality for castle military stockpiles.

When siege warfare doesn't gets enough attention because it sucks it presented major part of European medieval warfare.

Not all bows and crossbows are the same, and you can't speak of them as if they were as similar as modern rifles of equal caliber and barrel length. The main reason continental powers favoured the crossbow was due to the difficulty in maintaining a sufficient pool of trained bowmen relative to the potential threat of invasion. the Pavise equipped troops are vulnerable to heavy archery, recurve bow mounted archers are not a comparison to a full size bow especially since many types of crossbow exceed the range of that bow type.

Are you suggesting that i believe crossbows are pointless? id like to see some evidence of my thinking that, perhaps you were hiding the motive of your questions behind feigned ignorance because you know your assumption is baseless? good to know that you atleast suppressed your weaselyness enough to admit you were secretly trying to argue with me rather than have a conversation. the point of this thread is the question "why arent crossbows used with linear tactics" and i am explaining that they were not an overwhelmingly dynamic changing weapon in the way that the arquebus was as shown by examples of them not being used in that way, and the ways that they fail in areas the matchlock didn't. even in your own post you provide an example contrary to your own beliefs, the commonality of crossbow mercenaries would be evidence of them being a quickly purchased resource during wartimes, not of them being a carefully cultivated talent pool as many archers were. The crossbow never had the potential to usurp the entire dynamic of warfare in the way black powder slowly did, the crossbow was part of a complex dynamic of interplaying weapons far more varied than in even the period of pike and shot.

As the other guy said, amazing magnitudal logistical ease. The bare minimum of being physically able to draw back the string is all that's required, which when compared to bows is mind-blowingly better, even if they're slightly worse in a 1v1 comparison.

Where are these bollocks come from?
Medieval crossbows had less range that bows especially than recurve composites. Because of crossbows design with heavy parasitic mass of limbs and string. Even most powerful 1500 lbs draw weight crossbows had same arrow velocity or less than bows (in the 45-55 m/s range) Crossbows power can be only utilized by increasing bolt mass but this doesn't range though provides penetration.

Stop using AD&D and gaems as references.

Nigger they did that, not like in OPs pic but there was a period where you had groups of crossbowmen forming a line, they put down their shield, fired and then they where backed up by the second line, while they were reloading.
Repeated volley firing of crossbows was a thing and a good group of crossbowmen could eat an Infantry formation, regardless of the fact that plate could block them, because not every normal soldiers was covered in plate from head to toe. This is what many Swiss mercenaries earned their money with.
Crossbows aren't the best all around weapon in the medieval world, but they played an important part in the change of military tactics during the later medieval period and allowed Europeans to push back against foreign invaders.

Composite bows are shit in the European climate and the British Longbow has too many drawback for the training required to use it, which is why continental European Armies replaced their bows with crossbows during the 12th century.
Crossbowmen weren't low trained personnel, they either organized in town guilds or were highly paid mercenaries.

Point ->
(you)

user Siberian climate is stable compared to Europe. Dry heat or constant cold are good to preserve things, yet a changing climate that is seldom really cold or warm and that is constantly moist and has high humidity will rot everything quickly.
Also as I pointed out in my first post Mounted Archers from the East which usually used Compound Bows got their asses kicked by European Armies that gave up their Bows and replaced them with Crossbows.
You can talk how the Compound Bow is better than the Crossbow all you want, yet the historic fact is that Crossbows replaced Bows in 90% of European Armies and then Europe kicked the asses of Compound Bow using Asians with them.
user the thing is the point didn't got over my head, I ignored it because your sentence was simply wrong, crossbowmen didn't work that way even at sieges.
The guy shooting the crossbow is also the same guy reloading it, there were no manservants involved.
Part of the reason why crossbowmen had a high reputation, was that they got trained comparatively hard for a commoner soldiers at that time so that they could reload their crossbow fast during a combat situation.
You are right about the fact that crossbows didn't usurp the entire dynamic of warfare and that they were a part o a complex dynamic of changing battlefield tactics at the time, yet almost everything you talked about the actual usage of crossbows during that period was completely false.

I haven't read any other of your posts but this immediately lets me know you're spouting bullshit

Its not bullshit, professional crossbowman did exercise faster reloading time.
They were still slower than bows, yet a professional mercenary crossbowman could reload faster than if you gave the crossbow to any normal footsoldier.
Additionally crossbowmen where popular at a time when Europe began to transfer to have standing armies instead of raising armies just for war time.
So crossbowmen where along the first fulltime professional soldiers as we understand them today.
On top of that crossbowmen were also commonly deployed for skirmishing in front of the army, meaning they had to be fit enough to sprint with their big heavy shields and crossbows to the front, put their shields down, attack the enemy and then be quick enough to fuck off fast should an enemy formation attack them.
If the crossbow was a weapon you could give to any smuck to be proficient with, the French Kings wouldn't have paid such a shit tone of money to the Swiss to get their mercenaries.

BTW crossbows with composite limbs greatly outnumbered steel crossbows in Europe and were used for much longer time. See how dumb you are?

Crossbows were castle/town weapons not battlefield weapon. Most known achievement of crossbowmen in field combat is been trampled by their own knights at Crecy

Stupid muttmerican. Of course you don't know how things work. Your inferior race never worked with crossbows.

re-read some of the post IDs mate, i think you're confusing me and the other brit at the end of this post, although you were disagreeing with both of us.

Hiding your flag to shit on people is pretty fucking low tbh, correct your behaviour. you either hide your flag and dont flagpost, or you flagpost and show your flag, even if it's martian.

Americans actually invented best bows and crossbows known to a man. Thing euros couldn't figure out for thousand years of their history (and people say Dark Ages didn't exist lol).

...

They did "Pike and Shot" with crossbows and even bows long before it was a thing. How the English used to rape everyone including Scots and French.

Burgers are this delusional.

...

Amerimutts never invented a single useful thing. All they do is steal the works of Europeans, label it as their own, and parade themselves about as the best.
Without Europeans, the mutts would still be sitting in mud houses and giving each other AIDS.

Amerimutts never invented a single useful thing. All they do is steal the works of Europeans, label it as their own, and parade themselves about as the best.
Without Europeans, the mutts would still be sitting in mud houses and giving each other AIDS.
Fucking Zig Forums, work.

Shut it proxymutt. Stop defiling the Brits by actig as them.

Raping scots is not a great achievement and brits were beaten by a little french girl, lost hundred years war and all their continental fiefs..

Nah you are quite obviously moving the goal post. We were talking about bows vs. crossbows, not the difference between crossbows with composite limbs vs. ones with steel limbs.
You are wrong, as seen by the fact that the crossbows was used on the battlefield all over Europe for good 400 years and was only replaced by firearms.
In fact you even proof this point yourself, if it would have been ridiculous to deploy the crossbowmen at Crecy the French would have never done that in the first place.
Crecy happened in 1346, yet the Genoese crossbowmen that died there were known to be an elite unit since the first Crusade in the 11th century and survived until the 16th century.
Special crossbows for sieges did exist, but they were not the type of crossbows the Genoese or other crossbowmen used on the battlefield.

Oh you are right, I am sorry about that.

Too bad literally everything you use is invented by Americans.

DIDN'T I FUCKING TELL YOU TO SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU PROXYING MUTT?
HOW DARE YOU EVEN THINK TO IMITATE YOUR SUPERIORS
WHY DON'T YOU GO DIE FOR ISRAEL ALREADY?
THAT'S ALL YOUR MISBEGOTTEN RACE IS GOOD FOR

>burgers are this delusional

Attached: dog bless amerigas.png (1200x630, 1.86M)

USsd them after they stole invention from arabs during Crusades.

results again clearly demonstrated that crossbowmen should stick to castle towers.

you don't need special "siege" crossbow to shot from the castle

...

Says the part nigger amerimutt. You don't have the right to speak. Kill yourself you subhuman.

...

You act like a mutt and defends the mutts. Therefore, you must be a proxying mutt and mus die.

I know Islam is the new religion of your country but back then it was English and they were beaten by cannon.

It is now obvious you truly are a burger using proxy. The internet as we know it today was invented by a Britbong.

It is now obvious you truly are a burger using proxy. The internet as we know it today was invented by a Britbong.

What do you expect from a jewpig burgermutt? Their pathetic mongrel race tries to take credit for everything. The only thing they should take credit for is ruining the world by not letting Germany, Italy, and Japan win.

What the fuck happened to this thread.

So for the record, crossbow was not used in the same way musket was due to some reasons:
- reloading is way more complex and takes longer time
- harder to use as a melee weapon (lack of length and tubular design to add a bayonet)
- way less effective range, and stronger crossbow is considerably heavier in weight

But we must note that continental armies (German, Italian, French, Spanish) all increasingly incorporated crossbowmen into their infantry formation (and it later evolves into pike and shot), so this thought of mass crossbow fire wasn't too out there.

Never mind the brit stupido who said crossbow is a fortification weapon, that's bullshit. Crecy didn't end the use of crossbow, 50-100 years later they were still used en masse.

What are you even doing in this thread? you're raving about americans and yet you posted with a yankee IP on your one flagged post. are you alright? why are you debasing yourself?

Did you guys use crossbows or archers? did you copy chinese crossbows?

Composite bows were used in Europe long before the crusades, both the Greeks and Romans had them. If anything the Greeks and later Romans took that shit from the inbred fire worshipers who got those things from Steppe niggers. Composite bows do have a problem with the humidity of western europe, its why self-bows were rather prevalent until the crossbow came around. Composite crossbows do not have a problem with the elements due to how they're constructed.

We used crossbow even to this day, many mountain hunters still use big ass crossbow, in fact one of our earliest myths involving our ancient line of King protecting the land with some kind of God/Divine crossbow, then the chinese sabotaged it and took over the country.

As we all knows, composite bows aren't shit compared to the longbow.

Yes, composite bow can be smaller and weaved into interesting shaped like re-curved bow, but yew wood longbow has always been the best.

What if Washington had archers?

still, id take a composite recurve over any other bow of equivalent length. their power to weight ratio is ridiculous.

Holy shit Satan! You're onto a very important point there! Effective training regimes do definitely improve the way you use a tool/weapon! This completely changes the argument!

If you don't have the balls to post with your own flag them turn it off and accept the ridicule you deserve.

Yes, the crossbow is a weapon that is notably less effective than a longbow wielded by a (very very very) well trained man, but it is a hell of a lot easier to field a few thousand crossbowmen than it is to train enough of your people to produce a few hundred mid-range longbowmen. The mercenaries who had the funding and time to train with crossbows made up for a lot of the deficiencies of the weapon (when compared to the longbow), but expert users are not really relevant when talking about army level use - unless you do what the Bongs did and use legal and cultural tools to produce as many of them as you can which would probably be equivalent to a modern army fielding entire regiments of Delta/SAS/Spetsnaz equivalents mixed in with your average riflemen - it would probably end with you looking completely retarded unless you somehow made it work

What's wrong with mixing veterans into rookie troops again?

Shouldn't they balance each other out?

Producing veterans is a long and uncertain business (a lot of men are inconsiderate enough to die in the process as well), and then while the vets are certainly going to improve a unit of rookies the rookies are going to break a lot faster than the more experienced men which puts those vets in a place where they're very likely to get killed. It would generally be a much better choice to put those skilled and experienced men into special units where their greater skills can be used without risking losing them unnecessarily.

The concept was known since Roman times.
Your opinion on this topic doesn't matter, its historic fact that they went onto the battlefield and fought in several different roles.
You don't need it, but it enhances its utility. See pic related.

It literally does, because if is you then your claim was that I was spouting bullshit that crossbowmen were amongst the better trained soldiers.
And the fact that crossbowmen were amongst the first type of soldiers to be part of a regular standing army is the literal proof that I am right.
Additionally the Genoese and Swiss mercenaries remained popular for centuries despite takeing part in several battles on the losing side.
user medieval towns all over continental Europe had their own guilds to train crossbowmen. Its a misconception to think that the Longbowmen trained harder in their art than the Crossbowmen.
People decided to use Crossbows because they had their own defining characteristics, which made them better despite the fact that they didn't have the range of the Longbow.

Attached: 6350110252_193b6766e9_b.jpg (550x412 48.02 KB, 29.03K)

None of your guys point are contradicting each other, I would say the kraut is more knowledgeable on this message.

Just the damn brits who again cite muh Crecy as end of crossbow.

15,000 genoese crossbowmen v.

Attached: 1489752362258.jpg (294x273, 12.27K)

Objectively false. For teh same draw weight composite recurves produce more energy per shot and they have much faster velocities with light arrows.
Also when composite bows are longer and more time consuming to make they don't need rare materials to be good.

Learning how to operate a machine of pulleys and ropes to reload a weapon with hundreds of pounds of tension safely and quickly taking time is laughable. Right.

Attached: 23aa437cd2c46bc3de9093629732c732.jpg (220x400, 18.78K)

Yes, reloading a crossbow provided your string isn't massively frayed is completely safe, especially if you have some device to do the pulling for you, which requires even less training than you would originally. How retarded are you?

Attached: 001.png (612x368, 77.67K)

For a light bow that'd work. In the latter years of the crossbows life you'd require a cranequin or a windlass due to 1000lbs+ draw weights.

Uhh…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodkin_point

Getting good with that and operating under pressure still takes time to train into people. I'll quote you:
Blatantly false. Especially when a loading device is required. You're learning to operate a machine. A crossbow made for war is an expensive piece of kit used by professionals. Professionals train. It takes time to git gud, nigga. It feels like the assumption is in medieval times feudal lords just told their local peasants to tie two sticks together to make crossbows and because "they were easy to train with", hey presto you have an army of crossbowmen. A crossbow is serious weapon for a serious soldier.

Attached: 1439460039255-0.jpg (1958x1165, 783.31K)

It clearly states it can only penetrate chainmail. There are only rumors of it penetrating plate once in a test from point blank. The entire absolute existence of plate armor was to make the wearer a monster to defeat. You cannot penetrate it with medieval weaponry. "Armor piercing" arrowheads may stick on plate but won't go through.
The only realistic way to kill someone covered in armor is through openings or horrible amount of blunt force. Projectiles back then simply lacked the velocity required to go through thick steel.

Reloading a musket is a multiple-step process in which many things can go wrong, so training men to reload muskets more quickly is particularly valid and useful. A crossbow does not have that issue, you could hand one to a five year old and they'd figure out how it works within a minute. Especially in later years, crossbows were for sure a solid piece of machinery, but regardless of what year or what type, you require absolutely 0 training to fire and reload one, unlike bows. You could possibly shave off a few seconds of reloading time if given to a muscular, well-versed veteran. That benefit does not mean anything. The moment you produce enough crossbows, you can dish them out to any dumbshit conscript levy and bam you have a crossbow unit. This was the main attraction, because despite production costs, despite a lower volume of fire, they required virtually no training. Yes, there were professional units, like the genoese, that could stand in the face of danger and continue to reload, but those are the distinct outliers & not a reality for standard armies.

Arbalest sure can.

What were those large cross bows for? giant dragons?

longer ranged fire at enemy formations from secure positions.

Also dragons.

For early muskets, that was definitely not true. The real advantage was not in range or rate of fire but in armor penetration, shock effect, and that muskets make much better melee weapons than bows.

I've done a fair bit of study on this one. China in the Warring States period and early Han dynasty essentially did this, with line infantry tactics, as well as several different methods of volley fire and even trench warfare. They still required spears/pikes/halberds since crossbows are even worse than bows in melee.

Chinese crossbows were superior to medieval European ones because of the layout of their trigger mechanism. The Chinese trigger allowed for a much longer power stroke (period of acceleration on the bolt) meaning that a lower perceived draw weight would be more effective. Chinese crossbows had a powerstroke almost on par with a bow, meaning a 250lb crossbow was equivalent to a ~1250lb European one; but this also meant that while a European crossbowman needed a windlass, a Chinese crossbowman could draw with a belt loop and a squatting motion. They could fire volleys much much faster than Euros, almost on par with bowmen.

Supposedly there was a regiment of "Double-Armed Men" during the Civil War that used a longbow/pike combo, where the longbow attached to the pike for ease of carriage.

This is exactly what the late medieval/renaissance period was, look to the Italian Wars in particular. Handguns and arquebuses were around, as was mixed unit pike and shot block tactics, but crossbows, even the massively powerful winch arbalests, were easier to produce and use so you'd see xbow and pike formations.

This period basically mimics true pike and shot with earlier technology, mounted cranequiniers taking the place of dragoons and knights instead of unarmoured lancers.

The Early Modern Period is easily the greatest for variety of arms and tactics.

Attached: crecy.png (757x817, 371.3K)

I doubt your findings, if chinese crossbows were stronger, there ought to be more advanced in armor in China.

Actually, what armor did Chinese have in that time? I've seen plenty of jap and european armor of different designs but i cannot recall any of their designs.

Lamellar armor or wood armor.

Then may it be that it was impractical to use armor against such crossbows and it just became (almost) obsolete like it did with firearms?

What time? The period that corresponds to what we call the medieval and early modern times corresponds to what is covered in this book. It's of course not that in-depth, but it seems to me that you are correct and crossbows are the Chinese "equivalents" of muskets (from a historical perspective).

Nope, they simply used mass numbers and range. Their battles of the time had horrific casualties, but the Qin were brutal dictators that accepted any price for victory.

Basically this. After firearms, there were still cuirassiers and we now have ballistic plate, but it's not expected to stop everything. Chinese armor was always based on layers and depth, so you basically had nobles dressing in increasingly elaborate layers of silk and lamellar while the average soldier relied on numbers and hopefully fortifications. China even developed paper armor that was simply tons of layers of flexible paper, similar to the Greek linothorax, and it could stop bullets. Good luck making enough of it to outfit an entire army though.

Pics related. The average soldier had no armor, nobles had lamellar / coat of plate armor, and occasionally frontline spearmen had lamellar / coat of plates.

Attached: The-Mausoleum-of-Qin-Shi-Huangdi-6.jpg (300x200 102.42 KB, 32.09K)

>15,000 genoese crossbowmen v.

When did I argue anything even remotely against this? Yes, of course they changed because a crossbow is on or above a bow's playing field and requires no real training.
Then what does that make the two or three provinces that had crossbow guilds?
The amount of training it takes to teach a peasant to shoot a bow in the general direction of the enemy is a hundredfold what it takes to 'teach' them to operate a pulley.
Do you have brain damage my dude? Do you think bowmen just stood around and drooled on themselves?
Good, that means you know how easy it is to fire one.
Try harder lad, if you want to talk laughable, your understanding of reality fits the bill.

I still do not understand the fuck you are talking about.

Nigger, you can teach someone to fire a crossbow in an afternoon and they'll know it for the rest of their lives. For a bow, you must teach them since childhood (train their very bodies to facilitate use) Archers were built differently, they literally had a noticeable difference in their muscle structure due to the immense amount of training using a bow required. You can't hand a bow to a woman and have her be effective in combat because her woman body literally cannot handle the draw strength of the bow, but hand her a crossbow and she can at least be useful. Hopefully this highlights the importance of physical training which you seem to be disregarding.

Fucking idiot, you're no better than Plebs who say,
I'd rape your ass if we fought against each other, I'm sure.

Attached: are_you_retarded.png (281x270, 74.95K)

Literally the opposite is true. It's also bleeding obvious you've never operated a windlass.

It's the burger curse to think medieval Europe operated under some jeffersonaian equality principle where the most powerful people who had the privilege of owning land based on their ability to defend it with force spent time actively arming their underlings with heavy weapons.
Lol no nigga
Try 20
This has never been true. It's like the 100000 times folded katana can cut through 20 fully armoured knights argument but for ranged weapons.

Uhuh, and I'm sure you have. There's these neat things called videos that exist, it's like a bunch of pictures moving real fast.
It's the european curse to back up a strawman with ad hominem attacks on someone they can't actually prove wrong
Lol yes nigga
Ah yes, the famed pulley-pros, who can break the sound barrier with their experience at pulling a pulley and operating handcranks.
This has always been true. It's almost like saying winding a handcrank is easier than spending a hundred hours to get proficient at firing a bow, or spending five hundred hours to physically build up your arm muscles to fire a longbow.

I think there's an exaggaration on both sides here.

It's true warbow like the English yew-wood longbow needs strength training from teenager to master.

But a windlass arbalest isn't just every peasant weapon either, because it's heavy and complex. You need strength to use it as well as the mechanical knowledge to repair it in case it breaks during operation.